Body

Los Baños, Philippines – Farmers in the "texting capital" of the world—the Philippines—will soon have nutrient management advice tailored specifically to their rice crops delivered to their mobile phones.

The brand-new Jean Jeener Bio-NMR Center at the VIB Department of Molecular and Cellular Interactions, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has already played a role in a scientific breakthrough that made it into the leading science journal Cell. Thanks to NMR technology, it is possible to determine the dynamic structure of proteins. So Flemish scientists put it to use to find out how the activity of certain proteins involved in the stress physiology of bacteria is regulated. This is a first in every way.

Proteins, major players in the body

URBANA – With corn being a critical U.S. crop expected to help feed livestock and people around the world and also be a source for the production of clean energy, plant breeders are continually seeking ways to make the plants more productive. To better understand the role corn roots play in this regard, an agricultural engineer and a crop scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have teamed up to examine corn root complexity and how it impacts corn development.

Hamilton, ON (July 9, 2010) – An ultra-low-molecular-weight heparin called semuloparin has been found to reduce the incidence of venous thromboembolism in orthopedic surgery patients in a large clinical program being lead by a steering committee chaired by McMaster University professor Dr. Alexander Turpie.

Pregnant women aged 14-17 years are at higher risk of preterm birth and of having a child with low-birth-weight, especially if they are having their second child. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth demonstrate this association and call for better health education and the promotion of contraception after a teenager has given birth for the first time.

HPV infection heightens the risk of developing certain skin cancers and is worsened if people are taking immunosuppression drugs, according to a new study published on bmj.com today.

An international team of researchers found that people with several types of human papillomaviruses (HPVs) were more than one and a half times as likely to develop certain skin cancers compared to people with no HPVs.

Having discovered a dramatic increase of an easy-to-detect enzyme in the red blood cells of people with diabetes and prediabetes, Johns Hopkins scientists say the discovery could lead to a simple, routine test for detecting the subtle onset of the disease, before symptoms or complications occur and in time to reverse its course.

Patients with a certain type of scleroderma may get cancer and scleroderma simultaneously, Johns Hopkins researchers have found, suggesting that in some diseases, autoimmunity and cancer may be linked.

These findings could lead researchers closer to discovering what causes scleroderma, an incurable autoimmune disease that causes scar tissue to develop in the skin and in major organ systems, and to pinning down why some with scleroderma appear to be at increased risk of cancer. The insights add to the growing body of evidence linking some autoimmune disorders with cancer.

New Haven, Conn. — When Nicholas Longrich discovered a new dinosaur species with a heart-shaped frill on its head, he wanted to come up with a name just as flamboyant as the dinosaur's appearance. Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops.

LA JOLLA, CA-One of the most pivotal steps in evolution-the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms-may not have required as much retooling as commonly believed, found a globe-spanning collaboration of scientists led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute.

Toward the end of the last ice age, a major reorganization took place in the current system of the North Pacific with far-reaching implications for climate, according to a new study published in the July 9, 2010, issue of Science by an international team of scientists from Japan, Hawaii, and Belgium.

Hamilton, ON (July 8, 2010) – By solving the three-dimensional structure of a protein involved in repairing DNA errors, a group of McMaster University researchers have revealed new avenues to develop assessment tools and alternative treatments for people living with hereditary colorectal cancers.

Individuals with a high resting heart rate and a low beat-to-beat heart rate variability have an increased risk of developing kidney disease, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that the behavior of the autonomic nervous system may be a sentinel marker for late development of certain cases of kidney disease.